September 27: Can machines be said to think?– Ex Machina (Dir. Alex Garland, 2015): watch film in advance of class discussion through GauchoSpace or other
– Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (scan sections 1-2, 4, and get a general sense of the “contrary views” in section 6, e.g. 6.1, “thinking requires an immortal soul”)

September 29: Literary automata– Stanislaw Lem, from The Cyberiad (“How the World Was Saved,” “Trurl’s Machine,” “The first Sally (A), or Trurl’s Electronic Bard”) (1967/1974)

October 4: Bitistics– Stanislaw Lem, from Imaginary Magnitude, introduction to a book not written: Juan Rambellais et al, A History of Bitic Literature (excerpts) (1973/1984) [focus on intro to first edition; scan intro to second edition, from p. 70]
– for discussion: Lem, “Introduction” to Imaginary Magnitude
– Italo Calvino, “Cybernetics and Ghosts,” The Uses of Literature (1986) [focus on pp. 3-17]

October 18-20: AI in the speculative imaginary– William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

October 25: Conversational bots– Her (Dir. Spike Jonze, 2013): watch film in advance of class discussion through GauchoSpace or other
– John Cayley, “The Listeners” (2015-16)
– Tyler Cowin, “When Products Talk,” The New Yorker (June 1, 2016)
–> Have a conversation with one of the Existor bots

November 15: Expressive use of QR codes– Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse, Between Page and Screen (2010): watch demo video; hard copy for you to read (play with) on reserve in the library
– Caitlin Fisher, Andromeda (2008)
– Gretchen Henderson, Galerie de Difformité (2011): on reserve in the library; read about the use of QR codes on the site at https://difformite.wordpress.com/qr-codes/– Eduardo Kac, Outrossim (2014)